The modern homemaker relies heavily on the availability of foodstuffs that can be purchased in a refrigerated or frozen state. Between the time the food is processed and the time it reaches the marketplace, the processed food may be held in a distributor's warehouse under strictly controlled temperatures. The cost of operating the cooling and refrigeration equipment of necessity must be added to the selling cost of the processed products.
As described in Mark's Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers, Eighth Edition, McGraw-Hill Book Company: "The modern system of cooling which has been installed in the highest type of warehouse consists of a coil room containing the necessary brine coils, through which the air from the different rooms is circulated by a pressure blower. The inlet and outlet of each room are so arranged that the cooled circulating air will cover the entire room in transit; this is usually accomplished by having the cold air inlet in the center of the room and two return outlets-one at each end of the room."
The foregoing system basically was disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 659,468 issued to M. Cooper. In the Cooper system cool air is forced into the cold storage rooms through ducts arranged on the lower parts of the walls of the rooms. The warm air was removed from the tops of the rooms through perforated ceilings and returned to the cooling rooms.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a cold storage warehouse that operates without the massive refrigeration equipment required to operate a brine cooling system.
More particularly it is yet an object of the present invention to provide a refrigeration system for removing heat from a cold storage room through a heat transfer process with cooled air being circulated in a closed loop, finned, duct system wholly suspended below the ceiling of a storage room thus avoiding blockage of air flow through wall mounted outlets as in the Cooper system.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a high efficiency multi-cell cold storage warehouse having high degree of flexibility in storing a processed refrigerated or frozen products in any one or more of the cells.
It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide a cold storage warehouse in which freshly processed food products can be placed in a cold storage room and within six to twelve hours be refrigerated to a low enough temperature to be shipped the same day as processed or can be refrigerated to a frozen state within a minimum of twenty-four hours for shipment the day after being processed.
It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide cold storage facilities at a 20 to 40 percent cost saving depending on location in hot or cold climate, to provide a system for lowering temperatures at an energy saving of 40 to 60 percent and to provide a cooled air directional flow compatible with Coriolis forces acting on the moving air stream, that is a clockwise flow in the northern hemisphere and a counterclockwise flow in the southern hemisphere.
It is yet a further object to provide a warehouse in which the areas adapted for frozen food storage are insulated against the effects of temperatures outside the warehouse structure. This is accomplished by surrounding the low temperature storage areas by storage cells not requiring the low temperature required by frozen food storage areas.
And it is yet a further object of the present invention to provide an improved method of rapidly reducing the temperature in a cold storage cell by causing the warm air rising from newly processed food products to rise into contact with cold air being forced through a closed loop duct system having openings therein whereby a heat transfer takes place from the warm air to the cooled air, the heat transfer being permitted to continue until the storage cell temperature reaches equilibrium with the temperature of the cold air flowing through the duct system.
These and other objects of the invention will be apparent from the disclosure of a preferred embodiment thereof.